I covered several sessions of the 2005 IABC and SNAP conferences in Washington, DC, in May, but the publication that sent me to the programs hasn't needed some of the material yet. Because the editing tips could be useful to colleagues, I offer them here.
No use may be made of this material without prior permission from Ruth Thaler-Carter. Contact me at Ruth@writerruth.com if you wish to use any of this material in any way.
SNAP and IABC offer editing tips
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© 2005, Ruth E. Thaler-Carter
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Technology marches on, providing writers and editors with ever-more tools for improving and managing their crafts, but the basics essential to good writing and quality publications remain the same.
Regardless of the metaphor, that was the shared message from speakers at the 2005 International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and Society for National Association Publications (SNAP) 2005 annual conferences Washington, DC, last May.
“There are plenty of ‘diets’ out there, but you have to know which approach will best slim down your story,” said Ann Wylie, president of Wylie Communications, Kansas City, MO, and author of IABC’s Planning Powerful Publications manual, in “Put Your Copy on a Diet.”
“How much editing you do depends on the author, the amount of time available, your reader, the budget,” said Rebecca Hoeckele, client liaison and trainer with United Litho, Inc., and former managing editor of Police Chief magazine, in “Smooth Jazz or How to Edit Copy so it Goes Down Easy” for SNAP.
Highlights from Wylie’s tips for editing one’s own work and that of others include the following.
• Be selective and “edit before you write – it saves you hours and hours of time. Take a slice of the work – you want a piece that’s an inch wide and a mile deep, with great depth and insight. Take your long story and break it into smaller pieces that you can move elsewhere. We shouldn’t be doing stories; we should be doing packages, with sidebars, charts, freestanding vignettes, boxes, callouts and other marginalia.”
• Avoid compression – “the worst method of editing, but we all do it every day. We squeeze out life, cut anecdotes and good quotes. We end up with a piece that’s a mile wide and an inch deep.”
• “Count calories, carbs or points to set targets and standards.” Research has shown that “people are most likely to read paragraphs of 42 words. Your lead paragraph should be shorter than average – the ideal is 25 words – to draw readers in. You can build a little bridge into the story or create an obstacle the reader has to climb over - and he’ll stop reading.”
• Paragraphs affect readability because they “make a visual impact in text.” To make paragraphs shorter, cut metaphors; break it down – “just hit Return”; use bullet points, “the best to streamline text”; or “actually edit – tweak from the middle.”
• If sentences are too long, the reader will abandon the material. The ideal sentence is 14 words long; the longer the sentence, the less it is understood. To test sentence length by other means, use the “breathe or burn test: Light a match, say the sentence out loud and, if you run out of breath before the end, it’s too long.”
• When short sentences won’t quite do the trick, it is still possible to write “fat-free” sentences: “Branch to the right – start with the subject and verb, and then you can branch out with as many clauses as you need.”
• To make copy “slimmer,” “fill up on one-syllable words – they should constitute 75 to 80 percent of your text.” How? “Use the thesaurus, but not the one in your word-processing program. Try thesaurus.com, visualthesaurus.com or OneLookDictionary.com. Vary short vs. long words and put longer words in shorter sentences.”
• Be “reader-centric,” keeping in mind that “your reader doesn’t count words but asks how long it will take to read something. The average reader will read about 200 words a minute. Ask yourself how long a reader will spend on your material and write (or edit) to fit.”
• To “weigh and measure your writing,” use tools such as Microsoft Word’s readability statistics.
• To “burn calories,” “activate the passive voice. Passive adds words, is not direct, reverses the normal progression of thought, removes responsibility, is evasive and sounds dishonest, is energy-sapping, and is not conversational.” To get more active, “you can use Grammar Check, but a pro should be able to do this without tech support. Look for ‘was.’ Make sure you’re writing about who did what to whom.” A slightly crass but clear way of remembering this is that “each sentence has a subject and verb, and the subject should be doing the verb.”
• To avoid “empty calories,” “translate buzzwords, jargon and ‘corporatese.’ Revise the way you define terms. The usual pattern is ‘unfamiliar term, familiar term,’ which implies the reader is ignorant. Better is ‘familiar term, unfamiliar term.’” Using colloquial terms for definitions is also a good technique, “but the best way is not to use the unfamiliar term if the reader doesn’t need to learn it.”
• To “melt away flab,” delete adjectives and adverbs, and use modifiers that paint pictures (such as color, size and shaper). Use stronger verbs and nouns.” To ensure copy is clean and easily understood, “hire your 12-year-old to proofread.”
• To “find a supermodel” amongst potential contributors and develop an eye and ear for good writing or editing, “read better writing; read like a writer – for entertainment and information; keep clip files; take [each story] apart and put it back together. Steal the techniques – not the words – of good writing.” Examples worth emulating include Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders and the Best American Magazine Writing collections.
Highlights from Hoeckele’s presentation include these editing tips.
“How much editing you do depends on the author, the amount of time available, your reader, the budget,” she said.
Both association and professional publications tend to suffer from similar bouts of bad writing from contributors focused more on tenure than technique because many contributors are chosen for expertise in a given field and are not professional writers. “Most of those who write for association publications aren’t trying to write badly,” Hoeckele said. “They think the more convoluted their work, the more academic they sound.” To edit such writers, it helps to be “more interested in persuading (them to accept changes) than trying to inspire awe. You need to develop your own ear, to hear which words will throw readers for a loop.”
Comparing good editing to controlling the tempo or playing speed of a musical piece, Hoeckele said she looks for “anything that would bog the reader down and make it harder to extract meaning.” She starts editing by “reading through – all the way through – put the pencil down, take your hands off the keyboard. Then you’re ready to decide which pieces stay in and which should rearranged. It’s possible to take a story apart and reassemble it piece by piece, add transitions, and still retain the author’s voice.” She suggested looking for “doubling back, leaps of logic, awkward or absent transitions, omissions, and inconsistent tone.”
Once the overall sequence has been straightened out, “you can tackle the words themselves. Complex topics may require complex words, and jargon can be useful if you’re trying to connect with people in the same arena – it becomes a kind of shorthand. Writers aiming for the ‘wow factor’ are the ones we want to save from themselves.”
“Wrong notes” include unclear antecedents, clichés – especially incongruous ones, buzzwords and jargon – “which don’t say much or have any real meaning, and thus are real favorites among business and corporate writers,” non sequiturs, mixed or mangled metaphors, euphemisms – “which can be used to spare readers’ feelings, but also can be used to deceive,” and biased language.
When an article has “too many notes,” Hoeckele said, the culprits tend to include passive voice, weak verbs, “insipid” nouns, redundancy – which can be “insidious,” unnecessary bulk, negative statements, vague or inflated language, and irrelevant details. “Don’t bog down the reader or make the reader work too hard,” she said.
Rhythm matters as much in writing as in music, because “how the writing sounds is important to readability,” Hoeckele said. Luckily, “flawed rhythm is one of the easiest things for editors to fix. Balance shorter and longer sentences, and place punctuation properly. Think of punctuation as your percussion section.” The best way to resolve problems, she said, is to read material out loud: “Rhythm and flow in writing are a function of how words sound when spoken aloud.”
Improvisation can enhance the quality of writing as well. Consistency is important, but sometimes breaking the rules will make something read better. “The rules of grammar and usage didn’t come from a burning bush,” said Hoeckele.
Hoeckele sees the goal of editing as “helping readers get the most information they need from your publication.” Reaching that goal means the editor must be “as unobtrusive as possible. Put down the chain saw, and pick up a scalpel.” A light touch will result in greater “clarity, grace, and precision,” she predicted.
